?s about Clonazepam withdrawal/tinnitus
New member. Very glad to find this website. Not sure where to post my information request. Here is my story: I'm 65 years old, female, separated 3 years from my husband who is my business partner in the health care field. My primary health issue is hypothyroidism. Other than that I'm in decent health. I don't smoke or drink. I've never been a recreational user of benzos, but was prescribed them due to refusal of an HMO to test me for hormone levels when I started a health slide in my 40s. I was suffering from fatigue, sleep issues, weight gain, depression, and developed terrible anxiety and panic attacks. The HMO docs sent me to outpatient psychiatric and started me down a very inappropriate road of benzos. I was put on Xanax and then Amitriptyline, and was able to withdraw slowly from the Xanax on my own in 18 months. I was finally sleeping. But nothing was done about checking my hormone levels. After some improvement, I went into a slide again and was given Clonazepam for panic disorder, 13 years ago. I grew worse and was up to 2-3mg for awhile, I think using some in the daytime and some at night, but tapered down on my own to 1mg over several months. I did not have any serious withdrawal symptoms that I can remember. I remained at 1mg only at night since about 2002. The major issues of very low thyroid hormone and female hormones was not discovered until 2000, and I was prescribed the standard Synthroid type medication, which is synthetic T4 only. It failed me over the next 4 year and I grew slowly worse, with continued panic attacks and sleep issues. I have been with better doctors since 2004, the best so far since 2010, and finally started to feel more like my old self with greatly increased hormones, a change to porcine thyroid hormone which worked much better, and more of my supportive vitamins and minerals. At one point I was off of the Amitriptyline, but then had to go back and chose to go to Nortriptyline, which I have been on since 2002, currently 52.50mg. After researching, I found that the symptoms of anxiety, sleep issues, and panic attacks can be from too low female hormone. My previous doctors had kept me way under-medicated and constantly being tortured by insufficient hormone support. My life has been totally different since switching to my current doctor, and I was feeling so much better in 2012 and into this spring. My current doctor prefers synthetic T3 only thyroid medication and encouraged me to finally switch when I felt up to it. So I was able to do that very easily by May of this year. But, in 13 years, no doctor ever said I should come off of the Clonazepam. They all said, "Not now, perhaps later, or perhaps never. You can be ok if you never get off of it, don't worry." I know they felt I was never well enough to do it.
Then in July of this year, an unfortunately medication error occurred. I was mistakenly given a time release version of the T3 and didn't notice it, and it started to interfere with sleep. I grew increasingly sleep deprived into July. I checked bottles carefully, noticed the error and told my doctor. The correct med was taken within 5 days. However, within those 5 days, on a Sunday, when I put my week's worth of pill towers together, since I was so goofed out from lack of sleep, I completely forgot to add my Clonazepam! Never happened before in 13 years. As each day progressed, I had worse sleep and was growing more anxious. I had started my new T3 med and thought it would have taken care of the insomnia. It grew worse. I was really filled with anxiety and disorientation. The next Sunday, thank God, something within me realized that I had not taken my Clonazepam. In a panic, I called one of the RN's who works for us and asked her what to do. Since she also took Clonazepam for leg muscle seizures related to kidney dialysis, she told me I must take something to prevent worsening symptoms and seizures. I decided on .25mg and within 90 minutes I felt quite fine again like normal. She told me to keep some .25mg by my bedside in case I needed them for worsening symptoms and to take them. I slept 9 hours that night and was feeling great. I went maybe 1 week feeling fine at .25mg and then started having vertigo/dizziness, and a friend witnessed this once and said my eyes rolled back so I think it was a seizure. Within another week I was not feeling so good so took another .125mg, again, only at night, and everything settled down pretty well. The dizziness stopped. However depression reared its ugly head and got bad, along with some anxiety. I felt very separated from reality. I lost my management function and cannot get things done like I used to. I'm falling behind in my work. Thank god the panic attacks have not returned. However, tinnitus started up and has been my biggest complaint. I work at home and become mesmerized by the TV to block out the tinnitus. I have gone several days without it showing up, and then several days it returns. Some days its very low, other days like the last 3 it's been very loud and keeps me awake. Or it will start up in the morning and wake me. I did not get to sleep until 7am Friday morning. Then when it quieted down, I slept 5 hours. It was up and down today in volume, loud right now. I dread trying to get to sleep tonight. When it's loud it locks me down for the days I have it, I feel drained and miserable. Depression is worse. I've read some blogs where folks claim that you can have it the rest of your life, and that scares me terribly. I am thinking about taking 1/16 mg more to see if it will ease the tinnitaus and depression. Every day I have it and don't sleep well, I grow more drained and depressed. I don't know if I can hang on with this in my life all the time. I don't know anything about tinnitus or how it can be treated in the case of long term use of benzos. I have an appointment with my doctor on Monday for a follow up on my thyroid med change progress, and will talk to him about the tinnitus.
I would like to find out if any others have experienced tinnitus from withdrawal from Clonazepam or other benzos, and how long they had it, did it finally reduce or go away, did they have to increase the benzo a bit to find relief. I remember reading the Ashton protocol and I think she said that if you go back up on the benzo, you risk needing to take more than what you took before. I know the cold turkey withdrawal was dangerous but I didn't intend to do that. I am now caught between wanting to avoid going back up, but needing to try to get better and back to a fuller work load and I need to sleep. I just don't know how to think about this. I don't feel a physical dependency issue per se, but a desire to make this horrid hissing in my head go away. I would appreciate any ideas, sharing of experiences, or suggestions of other threads or areas to check for the tinnitus issue. Wow, sorry this is such a long post. Thanks much!